Archive for February, 2015

The right team won Super Bowl XLIX, with New England rallying to beat Seattle 28-24. (Hey, didn’t a simulation game play out exactly the same way?? Down 24-14, the Pats came back and won on a Tom Brady TD pass??)

Naturally, given what happened to clinch the victory at the end there, tons and tons and tons of football fans, analysts, and broadcasters across North America all suddenly think they know better than NFL coaches and offensive coordinators, with all their second-guessing. Okay, yes, if it were former NFL players second-guessing the call to pass instead of handing it off to Marshawn Lynch, then that’s fine. But what I’m talking about is people that’ve never stepped on the field in their lives thinking they are smarter than Pete Carroll or coordinator Darrell Bevell. The thing is, with only 26 seconds left, the Seahawks wouldn’t have had time to run the ball on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th down (if necessary), so they opted to throw on 2nd down. Malcolm Butler – ahhhh…the classic “The Butler Did It” headlines…. – happened to make a great play to clinch it for New England.

The bottom line is that it would be easy to knock Pete Carroll and point to his failures as an NFL head coach, but c’mon. Another comment is at least the NFL was spared from embarrassment…think about it, had Lynch gotten the ball there and scored to win the game, he would have treated the post-game on-camera interview as a joke and said nothing, the way he’d done all week with his “I’m just here so I don’t get fined” and “Y’all know why I’m here” nonsense. (And shame to those people who defend him for his actions.) And of course, with that loss, the Seahawks’ defense can finally shut up about how great they are.

(Image courtesy Getty Images)

And this victory by Brady should, once and for all, end that ridiculous debate of whether he or Peyton Manning is better. It’s no contest. Brady is 4-2 in Super Bowls – and easily could be 6-0 – while Manning is 1-2 with a blowout loss (Seahawks last year) and another game where his interception cost Indianapolis a chance to tie (Saints in 2009). Okay, yes, the elements were different, and the Seahawks’ secondary was banged up this time around, but Manning and his record-setting offense lost 43-8 to Seattle last year. Brady led a comeback from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter against these Seahawks. Case closed.

Finally, wow… the Boston team with the longest championship drought is the Celtics, and they last won in 2008! The Bruins won a Cup in 2011, and the Red Sox won the World Series in 2013. I still think those Sox should have an asterisk next to their name, though, as they practically tanked the previous season just to get Bobby Valentine fired. That’s real gutless and unprofessional, but I digress.

Congratulations to the New England Patriots, once again the model franchise in football. Haha to those haters who all came out after that KC game earlier in the season.